My final post

This will be my final blog post, at least for now.  This is the first blog that I have done. I found it similar to a free-write.  A place to connect to our readings, experiences and discussions, freely connect and see where these thoughts might take us.  Searching for videos to add actually helped me to make stronger connections, finding interpretations of others gave me a chance to look at things differently.  The blog is an area to go beyond answering discussion questions, it is a place to reflect on what you have learned and put down your own questions.  It is a great place to throw out your own ideas and build on them, having people comment or challenge your thoughts.  This is a great piece of technology to use in the classroom as some students might feel more comfortable expressing themselves in writing.  It is a place where you are not right or wrong, it is your own thoughts, an online journal.  This has been an opportunity for me to reflect on why I want to be a teacher and what I hope to achieve in the classroom. 

Critical literacy

Part 1:

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to overcome illiteracy by teaching how to read, comprehend and evaluate critical information.  Teachers give students an equal opportunity to learn the skills needed to become active thinkers and receivers of information and create a safe and positive environment for students and teachers to grow together.  Teachers model learning to read, understand, comprehend, analyze, to communicate and to collaborate information in order to become successful members of the community in which they live.

Part 2:

It is very important to use a language in the classroom that students can relate to in order to draw them into the lesson.  Talking down to students will not build a respectful relationship of learning in the classroom, nor will talking over our students.  In Herbert Kohl’s Chapter entitled Topsy-Turvies: Teacher Talk and Student Talk from The Skin that we Speak, the author reminds us that as teachers, we need to be aware of how we speak to our students.  We need to turn roles around and see how our students hear us.  “It is not merely a matter of what you say but of how your language is understood and how you understand the language of your students” (Kohl, 2002, p. 147).  Teachers become performers to engage students and connect with students.  This is essential in today’s classrooms where there is such a variety of cultures and abilities, teachers have to find a way to talk to all students to guarantee an equal opportunity to learn.  There is not a set language that can be carried from one class to another, a teacher needs to be aware of and know the students in order to have the right ‘teacher talk’ for each class.

I think the process of learning how to ‘talk’ is often overlooked.  Children learn to speak, to use words, but they need to learn the process of talking for a meaning, learning to talk to take part in discussions, learning to talk to question what they are learning and express their ideas.  In chapter 5, Tom Sawyer, Teaching and Talking, author Robert Probst speaks about the importance of teaching students how to talk, the importance of teaching communication skills to use in conversation and in discussions.  Teachers need to help the “read-on-through-readers” to learn to pause, reflect and discuss what they read, to question what they read.  By giving students a choice , we give them a chance to find something that interests them, we give them a chance to talk about something of interest and help them to turn talk into a natural skill, they become independent thinkers, readers and ‘talkers’.

Freire’s chapter from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed  spoke of the notion of the “banking concept of education”.  Students are containers or receptacles for information.  The teacher deposits the information, the students files it in their container.  Students do not learn by having information deposited.  They need to learn to use and understand the information through creativity.  Students bank information, recall it for the test and then loose that information, make room for new information to be banked for the next test.  For students to become useful members of the community in which they live, they need to learn how to process information they need to succeed, they need to learn to communicate and to adapt to the changing world and technology around them.  The banking of education controls what students learn, it does not teach them the skills need to independent, active thinkers.

In Success Guaranteed Literacy Programs, Lynn Gatto is a teacher that has found a way to teach students without the district adopted commercial reading programs.  She integrates literacy with all areas, she provides “experiences and problems that engage students in expanding their existing literacy practices in order to construct and use new ones” (Gatto, 2007, p. 75).  Gatto sees the need for the continued growth of skills students need to be successful.  She sees the importance of teaching students to analyze and discuss concepts.  The skills that Gatto teaches her students are skills that are not just deposits, they are ones that students can carry with them and use every day.

How to really teach literacy

                In Success guaranteed Literacy Programs: I Don’t Buy it!” Lynn A. Gatto talks about her successful literacy program.  Gatto does not use the commercial programs and products that her district provides to “teach reading, writing, listening and speaking” (Gatto, 2007, p. 75).  Instead, Gatto defines literacy as “shorthand for the social practices of reading and writing” (p. 75).  She engages students to use their existing literacy skills in order to build on them and create new skills by providing them with learning experiences.  Gatto teaches students that they are part of the process of their own learning.  She encourages dialogue and communication between students where they can learn to express their ideas and have meaningful conversations with peers.  The commercial scripts tend to be on the side of Paulo Freire’s banking education, where students are filled with information, not taught how to use that information.  Gatto enables students to develop a ‘critical consciousness’ that banking concept strives to leave undeveloped. 

                Teachers along with students are under pressure to perform, to get high test scores and to make their district look successful.  They are given commercial programs and products that are designed to prepare students to give high test scores, but they are not designed to teach students the skills they need.  Teachers like Gatto teach outside of those commercial programs and give students skills they will be able to use in all areas and beyond the tests.  Gatto theory of learning is one that should be incorporated into every classroom, it gives students a voice and gives them ownership in their learning process.

This video is entitled What does it mean to be literate in the 21^st Century http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn0_H-kvxkU and touches on how literacy has changed with technology, but is still about teaching basic skills to students that they will be able to apply to changing times and technology.

Effective teachers and literacy

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, literacy is being educated, cultured and having the ability to read and write.  All of the readings this week help teachers to connect with students and connect students to reading and writing.  In Chapter 13, Writing: Commonsense Matters in the book Adolescent Literacy, Linda Rief discusses the importance of literacy in terms of using writing to communicate “our thinking, our experiences, our knowledge, our opinions and our feelings” (Rief, 2007, p. 191), to build our skills in critical thinking.  Writing gives the writer an outlet to express their critical thinking.  Rief begins her chapter with the following statement:

“If we want children to become adults who are articulate, literate, and thoughtful citizens of the world, they must learn to think deeply and widely.  They must commit their thinking to paper, learning how to be memoirists, poets, essayists, journalists, playwrights, activists, speechwriters, novelists, critics, scientist, historians...The problem is, this is easier said than done!” (p. 190).

Writing takes time, it takes practice.  Writers need to have a reason to write and a real audience to write for.  A writer needs to have a connection with a topic to write, they need to have choices of those topics.  Constructive responses give writers the chance to expand their work through drafts and conferences with teachers.  A writer’s notebook is helpful to beginning writers as a place to collect their thoughts, then build on those thoughts and expand those writings.  Just as it is important for a teacher to know their students in order to be able to teach them, teachers must know their students to be able to give them books to read that interest them.  Reading topics of interest give writers more to write about.  Rief brings up the use of tellingboards for beginning writers.  Tellingboards help writers to turn their thoughts and pictures into words.  It is the beginning process of writing, it gives writers the chance to be able to move their thoughts around to form a writing that flows together to make sense.  Technology comes to play to give students new opportunities to become writers, whether through blogs, glogs or wikis, students have different mediums to express their ideas.  Technology will help to engage students in writing.

The following video is entitled “A Vision of K-12 Students Today”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8&NR=1  

In Chapter 15, Making it Matter Through the Power of Inquiry, authors Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Michael W. Smith express the importance of engaging students, especially boys to improve literacy.  Wilhelm and Smith give three principles that need to be in the classroom in order to engage students. 

“As teachers, we must

1.       Structure instruction to directly and explicitly address questions of genuine importance

2.       Expand notions of text and curriculum, and what counts as meaningful reading and learning

3.       Expand notions of competence, especially student competence, and find more ways to highlight, celebrate, name and extend it” (p. 233).

As teachers, we need to help students find a way to connect to the text and find the importance or significance in it, by giving them a variety of readings or alternative texts on a related topic.  Students need to be confident, to feel competent in their abilities.  Teachers need to take the opportunity to embrace what the students know instead of focusing on what they do not know.  “Who enjoys feeling dumb all the time?” (p. 239).  As teachers we need to see what students can do, we need to find texts that students connect to and use those texts ‘bridge the gap’ to those literacies that students need to know. 

                In Chapter 18, Effective Teachers, Effective Instruction, author Richard L. Allington stresses the need to improve the level of adolescent literacy.  Allington provides aspects that were found in effective teachers’ classrooms.  The first was the use of multiple texts.  Having a variety of texts available to students gave them the chance to find different ways to connect to the main text, connecting on different levels to meet with more students.  Teacher help students learn comprehension strategies to use with these texts.  Teachers motivate students to read across different subject areas by linking the students’ personal reading to classroom texts.  Teachers encourage literate conversation to improve literacy development and content knowledge.  Discussion encourages students to share knowledge they might not have realized they had.  This gives students a chance to consider different perspectives and grow to respect different ideas and points of view.  Effective teachers make connections with different classroom lesson and with students’ knowledge or lives outside of school.  To be effective teachers, we need to be willing to change the way we teach, we need to know our students and their interests and we need to connect to their interests and integrate those interests in our classrooms.  The following video is entitled “You Can’t be my Teacher” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VSymMbMYHA

In the reading by Robert Moses introducing the Algebra Project and the videos on Dr. Tuck’s blog we are shown the importance of advocating for social change.  I have thought of literacy only in terms of reading and writing, but literacy needs to be considered in terms of much more.  The mathematical illiteracy that we are facing prevents the students coming out of school today from being successful.  As times have changed and technology has advanced, we need to have students proficient in not only reading and writing, but also in science and math in order to fill the jobs available today and the ones that will be available tomorrow.  We need to invest in our students to create active learners. To do this we need to be effective teachers, we need to give students the confidence to learn and they will demand the opportunity to learn.  This is the way to move from mathematical illiteracy to a society literate in reading, writing and math.  By being overall effective teachers, we can help students to become literate in all subject areas. 

literacy and gender

I found the articles on literacy and gender very interesting since I am met with the challenge of getting my own children to read, a boy and a girl.  It is not always easy to find something to interest them, drama and romance for the girl, sports or dirtbiking for the boy - not always easy to find books for the boy!  But I do beleive that even if they are reading a book below their own level - they are reading and they will become better readers by doing it.  Pick up the comic section in the Sunday paper and read!  After creating a glog for a literacy class, I showed my children and asked if they would rather create a glog instead of write a book report, using technology, music, current events etc to connect with a book they have read for school.  Even my son thought it would be cool!  They might not even realize they are learning!

The articles by Bronwyn T. Williams titled Girl power in a digital world: Considering the complexity of gender, literacy, and technology and Boys may be boys, but do they have to read and write that way? Touch on important aspects of gender, literacy and technology.  Williams ended one of his articles with this statement:

        What we need to teach students is how to recognize the challenges of the river; how to navigate it to get where they want to go; and, when necessary, how to turn the boat around and – slowly and with great effort – move upstream against the current. (Williams, 2006, p. 306)

  

This statement really stood out for me.  We need to teach students skills, regardless of their gender, that will enable them to think, critique, distinguish, be creative.  We cannot foresee what students will come up against in the future, but we can see who they are now.  We need to teach them the skills of acceptance, diversity, creativity, and respect so they will be successful in society. 

We need to rid ourselves of the stereotyping in many areas – one being in regard to literacies.  Yes, girls like to read romance and boys prefer action and violence.  This does not mean that adolescents are unable to distinguish between fiction and real life.  Students need to be introduced to a wide array of genres but at the same time, they need to be able to read what they are interested in so they can become confident readers.  If we respect what interests them, there is more of a chance that they will allow us to introduce them to something new and they will give it a chance.  What we might see as violent, the real reader might see as “loyalty, courage, and the ability to face and transcend danger with a cool head and the help of close friends” (p. 513).  As teachers, we need to listen to the students and give them the chance to teach us, let them show us what they find in the reading of their choice, or show us what they have tried to achieve in their own writing. 

Williams spoke about reluctant classroom readers who might actually be ‘enthusiastic readers and writers in different contexts’ outside of the classroom.  Bring technology into the picture, the idea that girls are not involved in or as good at technology as boys is old.  Both boys and girls today text, blog, create wikis and facebook with clarity and speed.  Bring technology to the classroom in a way that students can express themselves and their ideas in response to Shakespeare or Beowulf.  The student that might shut down hearing of a five page paper due on the conflicts found in Romeo and Juliet might jump at the idea to create a blog, glog or movie trailer to show those same conflicts.  Some of the same questions about boys and literacy address issues of girls and literacy.  Girls should not be forced to read only about male heroes because that is what would interest boys. 

This is a YouTube video entitled Gender Differences in Adolescent Literacy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ypNoRzr9AE

This video shows what boys need, but it also can be used in respect to what girls need.  They need to have choices, to have their interests, ideas, perceptions and point of views listened to and respected. Students need to have positive role models, the chance to use technology, which they use every day, but they don’t realize they are learning as they are using it.  Let students use technology to show what they learn.  Give them different genres, graphic novels and magazines, not just wordy text books.  This video reinforces my thoughts on literacy and genders.  

The videos on Dr. Tuck’s blog really hit me from the standpoint of a parent.  We do so much for our children, try to give them everything we think they need so they will have a happy fulfilled life; we want them to be happy.  These videos showed parents that went against the old fashioned societal views of gender.  They listened to their children, as young as those were, they were attentive to the actions and feelings of their children.  The decisions they made to allow their child, born a boy, to follow his realization that he is really a girl had to be the most difficult decision they have ever made. I can’t say what I would do in that position.   I had just seen an Oprah segment on the same subject so it was on my mind.  I will say that I was shocked by the videos/show and I will admit that is because of the stereotyping typical genders that we have grown up in, a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl.  In no way am I saying this is the way only way or that any way of looking at it is right.  

This is a video clip that brings a question – are we rushing to label children at a young age?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78ND3vqPz90

 The article by Darryl B. Hill entitled Categories of sex and gender: Either/or, both/and, and neither/nor connected to these videos.  The concept of gender has always been male or female.  The author states that bodily form is often connected to gender, the ‘either/or logic’.  Some see gender as either/or – you are either male or female.  Others see gender as a spectrum either/or being on one end, then there is the concept of both/and –where gender is a mix.  “There are differences between genders…but that doesn’t mean that everyone who’s of one gender or another gender has all of them” (Hall, 2000, p. 28).  The other end of the spectrum is neither/nor – “a third gender…a personal expression of who they were” (p. 29).  There are many labels in society today, this is another label that some don’t want, they want to be themselves and to be accepted as they are.  As we teach our students to be respectful and accepting of other cultures, that no one culture is the only right one, we need as a society to accept people that don’t feel they fall into the either/or end of the spectrum of genders. People speak differently, live differently and learn differently, we need to teach students to be accepting.

This is a video clip on gender roles and stereotyping: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIwWS2atEmc